


Building Our Own Space: Sex, Purity, and Economics in Online Fandom

by farkenshnoffingottom



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Essays, Fandom Meta - Freeform, Gen, Meta, Meta Essay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23956690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farkenshnoffingottom/pseuds/farkenshnoffingottom
Summary: My senior capstone project, adapted for posting to this site.In which I discuss the policing of sexuality on the web, by the law and individuals; the threat this poses to fandom and our sexual and mental health; the essentially non-commercial nature of fanfiction and AO3; and how AO3's structure and founding ideals creates a space that allows us to explore our identities and exist in a world free from the economic and cultural logics of capitalism, if only for a moment.
Kudos: 5





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> This project originally had sections, so I am separating this into chapters. I won't put any notes in between the chapters, so if you want to read it in one continuous scroll like a more traditional essay, please read it on 'entire work' instead of 'chapter by chapter,' and the only interruptions will be the chapter/section titles. Citations and bibliography will be in the final chapter. Commentary footnotes and messages from editor-me will appear in [brackets]
> 
> I submitted the original paper in May of 2019. I edited lightly for length and clarity for a grad school application in November, and I edited it again now to fit this medium, as well as to catch any mistakes in the sections I did not submit. The content of the paper remains the same, although I have cleaned up some sentences and rearranged a bit to make it flow better
> 
> I wasn't entirely sure what to rate this meta. I went with Teen and Up Audiences, but please let me know if you think it should have a different rating
> 
> I haven't included all of the figures from the original paper. It just didn't seem necessary to include a screenshot of the front page of the website you're reading this on, for example. All online sources are linked in the text. If you hover your mouse over the hyperlinked sources, you will see the title, and for sources that are long or don't have searchable text, the title will also indicate where in the source I'm drawing from
> 
> Obviously, there are plenty of Tumblr posts on purity culture and AO3, and I chose these particular posts because I had just happened to see them before. If you want a wider sample, my [AO3](https://farkenshnoffingottom.tumblr.com/tagged/ao3) and [fandom wank](https://farkenshnoffingottom.tumblr.com/tagged/fandom-wank) tags offer a good starting point for diving into The Discourse. If I quoted a Tumblr post from you and you want me to take away the link or not mention your username, please let me know. You can comment here or message me on my [Tumblr](https://farkenshnoffingottom.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I did not go into certain things as in-depth as I'd like, partly because of time and length limitations, but also because my original audience (i.e. my seminar professor and classmates) were not involved in fandom, and therefore needed more time spent on definitions and explanations of culture. I have kept most of that in as I think it's an interesting discussion, and also I encourage you to read the sources I used, if you have access to them, because the world of fandom studies is so interesting and fun. Additionally, this paper is built on the assumption that we live in a neoliberal society, but I do not go in-depth into explaining that, as we had already spent the semester discussing it. If you want a starting point for a definition or sources on the topic, I would suggest [this informal reading response](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jzdzXyrQfhV2kPbXV_PaS19-MmX6bWa5uZpLBcVENpM/edit?usp=sharing) I wrote (word count: 620). Although they are not exactly synonyms, for the purposes of this paper, you can consider "capitalism" to be a stand-in for "neoliberalism," in that both words are referring to the economic and ideological system that prioritizes capital and the market over everything else.
> 
> Comments are welcome, but please engage with the ideas, not whatever you happen to think of me or my writing style
> 
> Alright, without further ado: please enjoy :)

In the summer of 2013, I had a conversation that changed my life. A friend of my mom’s from work, Kyrie, was telling me about a TV show called _Supernatural_. I had seen scattered episodes before, but on her recommendation I started to watch it in earnest. Somehow more important than introducing me to what would become my main fandom for years to come, that conversation convinced me to get a Tumblr and create my first fan blog. I was always a geek and a nerd, and if my friends happened to be into the same things, we would talk about them for hours. But I did not think of myself as part of a fandom until I joined Tumblr. Suddenly, there was a whole world at my fingertips of people squealing together about the content we loved, and I was hooked. Then, a few months later, I was scrolling through my dash, and I saw that someone had posted a link to their story on a platform called Archive of Our Own (AO3). I clicked on that link, spent a few days finishing that story, and then never stopped looking for more fanfiction to read. I made myself an AO3 account, and in May of 2014, I wrote and posted my first fic. The scope of my engagement in fandom has grown and shifted over the years, but these online platforms have shaped the ways I view media, interact with other fans, and identify myself.

Therefore, for the purposes of this project, I am speaking from a perspective that is both internal and external to the subject at hand. My focus here is primarily on fandoms centered around fictional media sources (TV shows, movies, books) and not on sports, music, or celebrity fandoms. For one thing, these are where my primary experience in fandom comes from, and for another, fictional worlds lend themselves so nicely to transformative works and fan practices. Additionally, although fandom has a rich and important history offline, this paper will only focus on online platforms, particularly AO3 and Tumblr. If AO3 represents the content side of fandom, Tumblr represents the social side of fandom, and therefore the two offer a useful cross-section of fan attitudes. I have a strong affective attachment to fandom, and that emotion certainly influences the conclusions I draw. [There is a difference between “fandom” and “a fandom.” Being in “a fandom” is specific to a certain source text, i.e. “I’m in the _Supernatural_ fandom,” whereas being in “fandom” covers the broader concept of being involved in fan communities, regardless of an individual source text.] Fandom of course has its issues, and my rather utopian reading of the possibilities fandom offers does not intend to gloss over them. Nevertheless, fandom, in its online histories and platforms like AO3, provides a meaningful escape from the neoliberal logics that govern contemporary life. It is not a perfect space, but it is a hopeful space.

In defining these “neoliberal logics,” I follow theorist Wendy Brown’s definition of neoliberalism as a cultural, as well as economic, force. In her book _Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution_ , Brown argues that neoliberalism teaches us to “think and act like contemporary market subjects” even in spaces that we would not generally consider markets, such as “fitness” or “family life,” and, in this case, our hobbies and passions. This logic “disseminates the _model of the market_ to all domains and activities--even where money is not at issue--and configures human beings exhaustively as market actors.” In such a system, “inequality, not equality, is the medium and relation of competing capitals…in legislation, jurisprudence, and the popular imaginary” [1]. Although this analysis applies to all types of inequality, the primary focus of this paper rests on the legal and cultural inequality regarding sexuality. When I refer to sexuality in this paper, I mean not only the modern assumption of sexual object choice, but rather the broad spectrum of human sexual experience, à la [Eve Sedgwick](http://www.faculty.umb.edu/heike.schotten/readings/Sedgwick,%20Axiomatic.pdf). When I refer to marginalized sexualities, I am referring to same-sex attraction, kink, sex work, and any other acts or desires deemed ‘deviant.’ I focus on AO3, then, because of the way the site makes space for all types of sexualities to be explored, expressed, and validated.

AO3 launched in 2008 as a result of, among other things, two fandom platforms, LiveJournal (LJ) and FanLib, expressing two distinct challenges to fannish ways of life. First, LJ, a blogging platform on which fans had established communities, caved to pressure over the kind of content they allowed and purged fan blogs. [_Fanlore_](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough_and_Boldthrough), a dictionary of fannish history run by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), notes that LJ censored sexual content only: “Journals that listed things like murder, crime, drugs, cocaine, theft, tax evasion or election fraud among their creators' interests were not banned: interests related to sexual crime were the targets.” [Tumblr user rapacityinblue describes the fallout of the Strikethrough as follows](https://rapacityinblue.tumblr.com/post/160877350628/kaciart-rocket-sith): “So one morning we all wake up and find that hundreds of journals…have been deleted. Literally gone: a lot of the media stored on these communities has been purged forever. Hope you had backups.” Most fandoms did not have backups. Without warning, a huge chunk of fan history was gone. This content purge was not the first, nor would it be the last, and fans wanted a site that would be stable and not subject to the whims of whichever corporation happened to own a given site.

A second platform that drove the creation of AO3 was the commercial site [FanLib](https://fanlore.org/wiki/FanLib). FanLib wanted to “make a profit off fan fiction writing without taking any legal responsibility” and help fans publish fanfiction, as long as it fit into their very specific bounds of allowable content [2]. Wendy Brown notes that “human capital’s constant and ubiquitous aim…is to entrepreneurialize its endeavors, appreciate its value, and increase its rating or ranking,” and FanLib is an example of a platform attempting to “entrepreneurialize” a previously non-commercial space [3]. In order to participate in the events FanLib put on, writers had to forfeit their rights to their own writing, allowing FanLib to do whatever it wanted with their stories. This site angered many fans, who saw this attempt to commercialize fan spaces as antithetical to fan culture. Additionally, the tentative peace that fans had reached with copyright holders over the legality of transformative works rested on the stipulation that their works not draw a profit.

The founders of AO3 intentionally wrote into the [Terms of Service](https://archiveofourown.org/tos) that they would not police the content allowed on the Archive and that works on the Archive could not make money. It was created to provide a stable and non-judgmental space for fans, by fans, to host their works. If AO3 represents the content side of fandom, Tumblr represents the social side of fandom, and it offers a useful cross-section of fan attitudes. [There are obviously other platforms used by fans. I mention Tumblr here because I come back to it later.] This paper will examine the structure of AO3, particularly related to monetization; the question of (violent) sexual content in (fan)fiction; and the question of sexual content in the law, using Tumblr as a case study. Ultimately, I will argue that the policing of sexuality on the web, by the law and by individuals, offers a distinct threat not just to fandom, but to people’s lives in general. Corporate spaces cannot be relied upon to resist censorship, so we must have spaces that resist the commercializing impulses of the web and society today. AO3 is one such space, and its existence provides a space to, at least briefly, explore our identities and dream up alternate ways of structuring the world.


	2. Definitions

**What is Fandom?**

Before we examine specific online spaces, we need a working definition of some terms. First, and most complicated, what does fandom really mean? Over the years, scholars in the relatively young field of fandom studies have struggled to identify the most important characteristics of the term. Professor Henry Jenkins in his seminal work _Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture_ proposed five levels of activity within fandom: consumption, critique and interpretation, consumer activism, cultural production and aesthetic traditions, and social interaction with the community [4]. This third point has become the most controversial of Jenkins' claims. Cornel Sandvoss’ definition hinges on the first point, that whatever else fandom is, it is always the “regular, emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or text” [5]. Each fandom needs what Sandvoss terms an “object of fandom” and I call “source text” to exist around, and this seems the most stable part of the definition.

Many scholars have reinterpreted or disagreed with Jenkins' claim that fandom constitutes a form of activism. Abigail de Kosnik explores the ways fans write political fanfiction, and how these fics make fans “emotionally invested” in the real-life political world around them by situating the issues within a fandom [6]. While political fics might affect individuals, Henrik Linden doubts the potential of any broad-reaching change, as “fandoms that previously used to be regarded as subcultures are now such established parts of mainstream society” that they no longer have any subversive capabilities [7]. Especially since the more “mainstream” branches of fandom have become more commercial, Linden’s point has merit. And certainly merely watching a show does not constitute activism, even if the source text is rather subversive. Yet, Jenkins raises a strong point when he says that “fandom celebrates not exceptional texts but rather exceptional readings” [8]. Later, Jenkins points out that “fans have chosen these media products from the total range of available texts precisely because they seem to hold special potential as vehicles for expressing the fans’ pre-existing social commitments and cultural interests" [9]. In other words, fans can make any fandom political by their readings and transformative works. Not every fandom, nor indeed every corner of a particularly political fandom, will read a text in a subversive way, but there will always be people whose “exceptional readings” pull others into the conversation and create new layers of meaning in the way people see the world and their source text.

Another facet of fandom, according to Casey Fiesler, is the ability to adapt and migrate as needed. A fandom might settle down on a certain platform, like LiveJournal, but it will always survive and move elsewhere should another Strikethrough-like event happen. While, of course, no one wants to lose archives of discussions and fanfiction, [Fiesler noted of the fans she researched](https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/91-casey-fiesler), “people were more interested in the community than they were in the platform.” Indeed, in preparation for the December 2018 ban on adult content on Tumblr, many fandoms were creating documents of contact information on other platforms for people, in case their blogs got deleted, and several posts were circulating telling people how they could back up their blogs. Many people, including myself, decided to stay on Tumblr, in addition to finding people on other platforms. When I asked Kyrie what platforms she has accounts on, she listed FanFiction.net, LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, Tumblr, Pillowfort, AO3, Discord, and Twitter. I have accounts on all but Pillowfort, and I have a few more besides. I personally rarely use many of the platforms I have accounts on, unless someone is hosting a challenge or event through that site. These platforms all serve different purposes: for example, some are social, some are archival, and some are a mix of the two. As a result of the abundance of choices, fandoms become stretched-thin. [Fiesler said in an interview](https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/why-did-fans-leave-livejournal-and-where-will-they-go-after-tumblr.html), “lots of people use the word _fragmented_ to describe fandom now… As we’ve moved across all these platforms, we lose people, it’s less tight-knit than it was.” There is no one place where fans set down roots, because sites have always been liable to shut down or remove content without notice.

Fandom is, of course, imperfect, but it also offers an important social space for many people. Even though fandom “has all the upsides and the downsides of any other community,” Francesca Coppa writes, “fandom is made of people with all their imperfections as well as their strengths, and for every flame war or rivalry there are corresponding acts of friendship and generosity, not to mention opportunities for collective action" [10]. [Tumblr user mayleavestars writes](https://mayleavestars.tumblr.com/post/128606783402/honestly-though-i-complain-about-fandom-a-great), “I complain about fandom a great deal I think, and _obviously_ there are elements of it that could be much, much better! but fandom as a whole - fandom as a unit - is one of the most _incredible_ things ever.” Kyrie told me, “Fandom is part of who I am and it finds its way into all sorts of unexpected and delightful places.” When I asked highkingfen what her favorite aspect of fandom is, she said:

> My favorite thing is when something happen and we all break together. We just yell and people outside of the fandom are like??? Peaches and Plums? [This is a reference to _The Magicians_ episode “Escape From the Happy Place” (season 4, episode 5).] Alright. You do you. Mean while we cry over fruits becasue the show gave us a deeper meaning of a small sentence. Meeting people that you can share this kind of specific experience create a kind of friendship that is nothing like any other. [sic]

In these fandom friendships, we are allowed to have emotions over objectively ‘silly’ things, because there are other people who get it. In fandom, we are allowed, if not encouraged, to care about things _just because_ , which gives us a moment of resistance to the cultural logic that tells us that everything we do and feel has to be productive or in the service of productivity.

Finally, as controversial as this point may be, fandom is a sexual place. [rapacityinblue summed this up rather succinctly](https://rapacityinblue.tumblr.com/post/160877350628/kaciart-rocket-sith): “say what you will about fandom: we like our smut.” Of course, the level to which this is true varies between fandoms, but on the whole, “fandom functions as a space for the articulation of sexual fantasies” [11]. [Maciej Cegłowski talked about](https://idlewords.com/talks/fan_is_a_tool_using_animal.htm) how fandom can be “a secret seminar in feminism…it has that same power when it comes to embracing sexual identity, and gender, or even discovering there’s such a thing as gender identity to begin with." As someone who found myself learning about these things through fandom, I wholeheartedly agree that fandom has an incredible and unique potential to teach. [I started to realize I was trans through fanfiction, because I had never seen that experience discussed anywhere else before. I had a similar experience with other aspects of my identity, and that only came because I had found this space, AO3, that hosted uncensored stories and discussions.] Explicit fanfiction, art, and discussions are, and have been from the beginning, a huge part of fandom.

* * *

Fandom is such a weird place. Like I watched a tv show and thought “wow, these two nerds have a lot of chemistry and I’d like to dedicate a large chunk of my life to thinking about them” so I went in search of other people who also thought these two nerds had a lot of chemistry and then it turned out that a shit ton of people were talking about these two nerds having a lot of chemistry and now it’s 4 years later and we write each other porn on holidays. - [thatravenclawbitch](https://thatravenclawbitch.tumblr.com/post/161059095139/fandom-is-such-a-weird-place-like-i-watched-a-tv)

* * *

**What is Fanfiction?**

There are many different levels of engagement with fandom, from ‘lurkers,’ who observe and appreciate the work of others, to active content creators and commenters. The category of “transformative works” includes things like art, video editing, meta discussions, podcasts, and so much more. For this project, however, I am focusing solely on fanfiction, alternatively spelled fan fiction, as AO3 was primarily built as a fanfiction archive. At a basic level, fanfiction is fiction based off of a source text’s characters and/or universe. For the most part, unless the author never shares their own writing or reads other people's stories, fanfiction does not exist in a vacuum: writers respond not only to the source text but to other people's interpretations and collective understandings as well. [Fiesler emphasizes that](https://cfiesler.tumblr.com/post/183592158575/the-narnia-novel-is-not-fanfiction-fanfiction-is) fanfiction is "produced inside fandom." This means that writers have both an understanding of fannish culture more broadly, but also an understanding of a specific fandom's approach to canon and to certain characterizations. [We've all been in a fandom that saw something from the source text, said, "nope, that never happened, definitely not, We Don't Talk About That," and then for all intents and purposes, the fandom treats that choice as nonexistent. The same is true in the opposite direction, where the fandom decides something is true of a character, or a piece of meta is taken as canon, or a popular fic within the fandom informs people's understanding of the text.]

When it comes to writing fanfiction, there are several different genres and styles of writing to choose from. Jenkins identifies ten ways to write fanfiction: “recontextualization,” “expanding the series timeline,” “refocalization” onto secondary characters, “moral realignment,” “genre shifting,” “cross overs,” “character dislocation” into an alternate universe, “personalization,” i.e. self-insert fic, “emotional intensification,” and “eroticization” [12]. [Tumblr user goodboydummy](https://goodboydummy.tumblr.com/post/30147789340/i-dont-know-if-anyone-has-ever-done-this-before) made an excellent set of diagrams that illustrate where some of these genres fit into the canon, or ‘official’ content of the source text.

[Image ID: Diagrams of different types of fanfiction, where canon is represented as a straight line and the types of fanfiction are different colored lines. The diagrams include an extension after canon ends, an additional scene inserted into canon, an alteration that takes the story away from canon, an alternate universe, crack fic (represented as a squiggle around the line of canon, saying "What is plot?"), a different point of view for a canon scene, and drabbles (represented as a mix of small alterations, additions, and extensions to the canon line).

Regardless of the genre writers use, fanfiction is often critical of the source material in a way most people outside of fandom do not expect. Although the original post seems to have been deleted, [theadventuresofcargline quotes Lev Grossman](https://farkenshnoffingottom.tumblr.com/post/166835742732/i-adore-the-way-fan-fiction-writers-engage-withT), author of _The Magicians_ series, as saying, “Some of it is straight-up homage, but a lot of [fan fiction] is really aggressive towards the source text…There’s a powerful critique, almost punk-like anger, being expressed there--which I find fascinating and interesting and cool.” Fans tend to use much more explicit and sarcastic language to get across the same point. ofgeography says on the same post, “Fanfiction is 60% fun, 30% porn and 120,000,000% fixing canon because canon is WRONG and needs to go sit in the corner and think about what it’s done.” [_Fansplaining_ conducted a survey to get fans’ definitions of fanfiction](https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/towards-a-definition-of-fanfiction), and one respondent wrote that people write fanfiction “because breaking into the creators [sic] office and telling them that everything that they did is wrong and rewriting it is considered ‘rude’ and ‘illegal.’” Despite, or perhaps because of, the fan critique of the source text, fanfiction is a hugely important aspect of the fan experience. Indeed, Kyrie, a moderator on a fic review blog within the Dean/Castiel ship in the _Supernatural_ fandom, told me that fanfiction is what keeps her in fandom.

Fanfiction is usually not as worshipful as many imagine it to be, and nowhere is that clearer than in the realm of slash fic and shipping. Shipping essentially means wanting two or more characters to be in a relation _ship_ together, and slash fiction specifically refers to the shipping of same-sex characters, originating with Kirk/Spock in the _Star Trek_ fandom. [For more information on how fans define and think about shipping, see the [2019 _Fansplaining_ shipping survey](https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/shippers-on-shipping).] Kristina Busse argues that “fanfiction often tailors to our very desires, our innermost fantasies, sexual or not,” because its writers “are free to include explicit material in ways they cannot in professional publications" [13]. These fantasies, for many fans, “are a meaningful engagement and balancing of conflicting forces between self, fantasy, and culture,” and they help fans to process their own desires and place in the world [14]. Alexis Lothian considers this process of reading, writing, and engaging with sexual and emotional fanfiction as a “world-making practice” with “delightful, arousing, awkward, or embarrassing” results that “need not be incompatible with the insights of critical queer studies.” In fact, she notes:

> To look queerly at fannish temporalities is to attend to moments in which they refuse narratives of development and progress by which particular moments in media and LGBT history are seen as passing into irrelevance; reconfigure norms of gender and sexuality; and use the affective technology of fannish love to build spaces that both reproduce and subvert dominant economies. [15]

This understanding of the potentials of queer fan readings is extremely important in our current context. The ability of fandom to linger in the past instead of driving forward into the future allows us to question the narrative that things are always increasing or improving. Slash fiction can offer a glimpse into worlds popular culture refuses to see, such as the subversive potential and fullness of lives lived under ‘more repressive’ times, as well as showing the ways our current society has not ‘moved forward’ as far as we like to think. While some of the pleasures of slash fiction are purely “delightful,” it can also offer a radical moment of reflection on society at large.


	3. The Economics of Fandom

Another aspect of fandom that resists the dominant cultural logics is the unmonetizability of fanfiction. Thirty-four percent of respondents to the [_Fansplaining_ survey](https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/towards-a-definition-of-fanfiction) included the idea that “fanfiction is not for profit” in their definitions. Certainly, many feel that fandom is and should be completely separate from corporate or commercial interests. In comparison to the past fandom struggle against lawsuits and cease-and-desist orders from copyright holders, the current fight seems to be “how to avoid being sucked into the vast wealth-extraction machine that is creative production in late capitalism” [16]. Indeed, once the media identified fans as a consumer group, they did all they could to extract money from fandoms. Popular culture now courts fandoms, as long as the fandoms color within the lines and follow corporate rules and logics [17]. Many fans do not take kindly to these attempts to monetize their spaces.

That being said, there are, of course, commercial and consumer sides to fandom. Many fan practices, such as going to conventions, are expensive. Internet access to fandom is comparatively cheaper than real-life fan experiences. There are online platforms where fans buy and sell merchandise, fanart, and other transformative works. Yet fandom on the whole is structured by what several fan scholars consider a “[gift economy](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Gift_Economy).” Fans share their creative works and analyses for free, individually or through challenges and gift exchanges. Fandoms also organize auctions, where fans can “buy” works by donating to something; fan auctions are often organized after natural disasters to raise money for the relief efforts, for example. All of these exchanges demonstrate that fans do act as consumers. However, as Linden argues, fandoms as communities tend to resist the consumerist impulse [18].

The mass media relates to fandom in a very different, and much more predatory, way. Linden claims that the corporate media “benefit from an economic and material point of view” from fan labor, and he considers the benefits for fans - “contributing to a community, sharing a passion,” or increasing “ _social_ currency” - to be less important or valuable [19]. Yet, for many fans, these things are exactly the point of their fandom. [Bertha Chin pushes back against this point](https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0513) and urges us to “remember that fans are allegiant to the text rather than to the industry; remembering this may help us take seriously the notion of pleasure, which is so often absent in fan studies.” Additionally, danah boyd points out that many scholars take the question of “free labor” by fans for corporations and argue that fans should be compensated for their labor. boyd argues that this is entirely missing the point: “I can’t help but feel really icky about that, not because I don’t think people should be compensated for labor but because I think that there’s a social cost to understanding every act of production as labor” [20]. Brown warns about the danger of understanding the world through this lens: “Neoliberalism is the rationality through which capitalism finally swallows humanity” [21]. Any potential for resistance to the values of neoliberalism slips away when we allow the question of economic worth over all other to enter fannish spaces.

We must also take into account fans’ opinions on what they do when considering whether money in fan spaces is exploitative. For example, [Fiesler and co-authors Shannon Morrison and Amy Bruckman did not like FanLib because](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858409) “a group of men created a website intended to monetize content that a community of mostly women had been sharing amongst themselves for free.” The outsider status of the company contributed to the unease, as many fans saw it as FanLib trying to exploit their community practices for their own profit, not the betterment of fans or fandoms. In comparison, highkingfen has two podcasts and an unofficial D&D book for _The Magicians_ fandom. She told me it takes three hours to put together an episode of _Fillorians United_ and five to six hours to put together an episode of _Further Than Fillory_ , and she has a Patreon account for donations to help off-set that time. She has a Ko-fi and a Kickstarter for her D&D book “to help me pay for the many hours I put in it since i give it for free after.” This money all comes from fans, not corporate interests. I would safely assume that she does not consider this exploitation, as each of these projects is voluntary, [what Chin might call “a service to fandom.”](https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0513) Her work, like AO3, is by fans, for fans. She jokes that “I have a cinema BA, finally I can use it for something!” She uses her skills to analyze the show and provide insights to other fans that they might not notice without her background. Everyone contributes different things to a fandom, but they all have value beyond what Linden sees as “economic and material” benefit.

**AO3's Non-Corporate Structure**

The founders of AO3 certainly saw the creative value of fandom, and they made a concerted effort to make sure fandom would always have a non-commercial space to fall back on. [Fiesler, Morrison, and Bruckman praised AO3](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858409) for “baking” community values into the platform from the very beginning, prioritizing “accessibility, inclusivity, and identity.” They also note, “Rarely are computing systems developed entirely by members of the communities they serve, particularly when that community is underrepresented in computing.” AO3 was a radical platform even from its inception. The founders and fan volunteers, “a mostly-female mix of coders, accountants, librarians, user interface designers, and other professionals who understood the intricacies of such a task,” built [one of the most ambitious and successful archives on the Internet](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/an-archive-of-our-own-how-ao3-built-a-nonprofit-fanfiction-empire-and-safe-haven). Linden claims that even when fandom tries to be subversive, “the fact that most of the Web 2.0 infrastructure is owned by a small number of global corporate digital media giants implies that ‘structure’ may still triumph over ‘agency’” [22]. In light of this, the fact that AO3 not only does its own programming but also owns its own servers means that there is still room for agency on the Internet.

Earlier this year, AO3 got nominated for a Hugo Award in the “Best Related Works” category for its infrastructure. Even though the site is still in its beta version, it has had a decade of solid use to prove that it works, and the features have only continued to improve. [englishmace on Twitter](https://twitter.com/englishmace/status/1113235497961250816) says, “I know librarians who’d kill for that kind of tech! and this is glued together from cloudsourced specs while training their OWN coders on the way.” The search system is extremely advanced. Perhaps the best example of how remarkable this infrastructure is comes when we look at the tagging system. Tags on AO3 are a “folksonomy,” wherein users can tag a work with anything they want, and volunteer “tag wranglers” behind the scenes who sort the freeform tags into their parent groups. For example, authors might choose to tag their work “Angst,” “so much angst,” “angsty,” etc., and each of those works would show up in searches for the “Angst” tag. [This folksonomy gives authors freedom](https://twitter.com/GretchenAMcC/status/1113261927403331585) over how to tag their works, but it also ensures that the Archive is highly functional. [Fiesler, Morrison, and Bruckman point out](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858409) how a tagging system like this goes a long way towards making people feel included: if an author writes a gender-non-conforming, nonbinary, etc. character, they can use whatever tag fits the character and the identity while allowing users to find all of the fics with a genderqueer character. This is just one of the many ways AO3 provides a space where people can find validation for and pride in their identities.

AO3 is a non-profit, and as such, it is not vulnerable to arbitrary content restrictions. Fanfiction sites like FanFiction.net that introduced advertisements to their platforms had to restrict their content so as to not offend potential advertisers, and they were much more likely to risk angering their user-base than losing the income. Coppa, one of the founders of AO3, stated, “If it was a for-profit organization, we would have been bought in 2011. If we were not feminists and we were not committed to a nonprofit experience, we would have been bought by Yahoo! or Verizon or somebody like that” and made millions of dollars. Thankfully for Archive users everywhere, “[we were [feminists], so we built a nonprofit so that it could not be sold](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/an-archive-of-our-own-how-ao3-built-a-nonprofit-fanfiction-empire-and-safe-haven).” Of course, AO3 and the group that runs it, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), are not perfect, and there has been drama over the years, such as the board election in 2011, when many volunteers spoke about burnout and mismanagement. [LiveJournal user stewardess wrote a hopeful post about the situation](https://stewardess.dreamwidth.org/324475.html) that ended, “But if the OTW was set up correctly…it will come through this. And the very good news is: it was set up correctly.” The foundations of the OTW and AO3 were built to last, and the last eight years show that stewardess was right.

AO3, but particularly the OTW’s legal team, has been instrumental in keeping fandom running in the face of copyright battles. With the help of the OTW, fans are more likely to resist copyright and cease-and-desist notices on their noncommercial works, because they actually stand a chance of winning. At the same time, “copyright owners have decided not to follow up on informal threats” when fans push back, so the legal status of fanfiction has reached somewhat of an equilibrium [23]. AO3 itself is protected by the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act](https://archiveofourown.org/dmca), which “creates a safe harbor, or a legal exemption, from copyright infringement liability for Internet service providers (ISPs) and other intermediaries,” so they are able to use their legal resources for fans instead. The word “noncommercial” is key here, as it is one of the criteria for determining fair use. Although it is not always “absolutely necessary” for fair use, [AO3 decided from the beginning](http://www.transformativeworks.org/faq/) to be completely not-for-profit, both as a platform and for individual works hosted on the platform. This decision reflects both an understanding of how they can keep fanfiction protected under the law, and also the non-commercial values that the founders brought with them from FanLib and LJ.

Because fans are not a monolithic group, as we will see more in a moment, some fans want to be able to make a profit off of their work. [Flourish Klink of _Fansplaining_ points out](https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/86-the-money-question) that even though AO3 does not let you make money “directly in the author’s notes,” it does not “prevent you from doing things like pulling your fic to publish. And it certainly doesn’t prevent you from doing things like linking to your social media and from there monetizing your fic.” AO3 does not prevent fans from making money; it merely disallows it on the platform itself. [Betsy Rosenblatt, a lawyer with the OTW](https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/4-buncha-lawyers), is wary of the implications of monetizing fic: “it certainly breeds the possibility of a ‘should.’” If you could be making money off of your fanfiction, shouldn’t you then choose to make money off of it? Neoliberal logic teaches us that any time we can make money, we should be exploiting that opportunity. Carving out a corner of the Internet where we are _not allowed_ to make money gives us the opportunity to escape from this overwhelming market logic and do things for the sake of our passion. And, [as Coppa says of AO3](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/an-archive-of-our-own-how-ao3-built-a-nonprofit-fanfiction-empire-and-safe-haven), “The whole project was made from love.”


	4. The 'Purity' Question

Fandom is not a monolithic entity. Not everyone feels that slash fiction, sexual content in general, and fanfiction that focuses on darker themes (darkfic) are good or even tolerable. The rejection of these genres is a facet of what is known in online spaces as "purity culture." The purity question has haunted fandom since the very beginning. In fact, it seems to be a perennial problem of human society: what should other people be allowed to think, much less do? This question almost entirely pops up in relation to sex, particularly violent sex. [As Flourish Klink points out](https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/84-purity-culture), “No one has a problem with you writing about murder!” Things that are just as bad, if not worse, than deviant sexual behavior do not draw the same ire. Additionally, there exists a double standard where those who get all het up about what they see as “problematic” topics in fanfiction do not critique published authors and popular media with the same level of vehemence. Yet at the same time, fandom does a much better job at giving content warnings and being aware of people’s triggers than popular media, which often does not give any indication of what the story will contain. Regardless, there is always a vocal contingent of fandom who attempt to police the content other people are allowed to create.

Purity culture has created a false equivalence between writing or reading about something and wanting to do it in real life. “Anti,” a term which started out referring to someone vehemently opposed to a certain ship, has grown to mean someone who is opposed to any “problematic” content. In antis’ eyes, people who like certain ships are inherently immoral. Antis complain about pedophilia and incest the most, but the critique has become so divorced from the actual definitions of those words that [Elizabeth Minkel can correctly state](https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/84-purity-culture), “Language has no meaning anymore.” I have seen people claim that ships with a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old are pedophilia. I have seen people claim that aging-up characters and writing about them as adults is pedophilia. Minkel has “seen people argue ‘well they’re such good friends they’re like brothers so it’s basically incest.’” Under anti logic, anyone who likes any of these ships does not just condone pedophilia, they are pedophiles themselves. However, Joanna Russ, in her essay “Pornography by Women for Women, with Love,” argues that “what excites in fantasy is both far more exaggerated than real life and not the same as in real life…its meaning as experience becomes changed when it’s made into fantasy” [24]. Fiction certainly has an impact on reality, but it is not a one-to-one relationship.

Much of fanfiction covers dark themes, and that is both okay and important. [Minkel argues](https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/84-purity-culture), “We do ourselves a real disservice when we don’t actually tackle any difficult themes in fanfiction, or fiction in general.” [Tumblr user portraitoftheoddity defends dark stories](https://portraitoftheoddity.tumblr.com/post/168926504854/is-it-ok-to-like-darkfic-if-youve-never-been):

> They take us to extremes of emotion and the human experience. They plumb the depths of the human id. Even someone with the most charmed life still lives in a world where bad things happen…Darkfic lets all of us explore those in relative safety. It makes us feel, and can thrill and horrify us as much as any thriller or horror movie. It can make us consider our own darkness, and be more aware of it.

And this self-awareness is hugely important. [Tumblr user glorious-spoon writes](https://glorious-spoon.tumblr.com/post/160271970856/so-on-the-topic-of-trigger-warnings-anecdotally), “Pretty much everybody can suss out that a violent rape scene needs a content warning; a surprising number of people have no problem with labelling a story depicting emotional manipulation, verbal abuse, and/or deliberate public humiliation of an intimate partner as ‘romantic.’” Darkfic, then, can actually help people avoid triggering or upsetting content, because the writers know they are writing dark things, so they are more likely to warn for them. With appropriate warnings, people can know what they are getting into, and then they can choose whether or not they want to engage with that story.

[Image ID: AO3's "proceed to content" page. A yellow bar reads "This work could have adult content. If you proceed you have agreed that you are willing to see such content." One button says "Proceed" and the other says "Go Back."]

Hugely important to the question of what content should be allowed is the presence of an effective rating and tagging system. AO3 just added a feature to their search filters last year, so now users can choose tags, warnings, ratings, characters, and pairings to exclude from their searches. This feature joins their highly advanced search system for including certain criteria to enable Archive users to truly customize what kinds of fanfic they find. Every fic that goes up on the Archive has to mark major content warnings. AO3 allows authors to choose not to use Archive warnings or rate their works, but these works will not show up in searches for General or Teen and Up Audiences. When a user clicks on a fic rated Mature, Explicit, or Not Rated, they have to verify that they are willing to see such content, and logged-in users can customize their display settings. [Minkel describes this](https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/8/18072622/fanfic-ao3-free-speech-censorship-fandom) as “a system of mutual trust.” The Archive trusts authors to properly tag their works, but can re-classify a work if someone submits a complaint, and the author trusts the reader to make their own decisions about the content they choose to consume.

[Image ID: A tag cloud of the most popular tags on the archive, from [AO3's "Browse Tags" page](https://archiveofourown.org/tags). Screenshot May 2, 2020.]

AO3 has allowed all kinds of content from its inception. In their [Terms of Service](https://archiveofourown.org/tos), they state, “Unless it violates some other policy, we will not remove Content for offensiveness, no matter how awful, repugnant, or badly spelled we may personally find that Content to be.” We have already seen how important freedom of expression within fandom spaces is, and AO3 is one of the only platforms that has this statement built into their Terms. [As rapacityinblue writes](https://rapacityinblue.tumblr.com/post/160877350628/kaciart-rocket-sith), “AO3 took the early fandom nugget ‘Don’t like, don’t read’ and made it policy.” AO3 will never ban a specific kink or pairing, which means that fans can feel free to explore the kinds of content they want to. Authors know their works will always be welcome on the Archive, and readers go into the Archive knowing that AO3 will never shame them for their interests and desires. Not all content on AO3 is sexual or explicit, but the fact that it allows sexual content normalizes and validates people’s experiences of sexuality.

[Image ID: Charts from [data-monkey's AO3 Stats Project](https://data-monkey.tumblr.com/post/184417063901/ao3-stats-project-basic-questions). One chart shows AO3 works by pairing type. The M/M category is by far the most popular, followed by F/M, Gen, F/F, Multi, and Other, in that order. The other chart shows AO3 works by rating. General Audiences and Teen and Up Audiences have the most works, with Mature and Explicit at about half as many works. Not Rated is the smallest of the categories.]


	5. Policing Sex Online

**Tumblr**

In almost direct opposition to AO3, we have the blogging platform Tumblr, which is currently owned by Verizon. Tumblr did not start out as a fandom platform, but it had many features that drew fans to it: text, images, video, and audio could all be posted and easily shared, and communication between blogs was very easy to manage. A fan who goes by the name Kyrie told me in an email that Tumblr “intensified [her] fandom experience. Suddenly, there was an easy way to rapidly access fans and fan content.” This can be both a positive and a negative feature, because it means that we engage less deeply with more content. [fffinnagain describes Tumblr’s culture](https://fffinnagain.tumblr.com/post/97403474373/limits-on-tumblr-fandom-communities) as “a high school cafeteria: small groups talking and joking loudly amongst themselves, while everyone is exposed to everyone else’s noise.” Tumblr has provided a useful central location for many fans, but the pace and levels of engagement are extremely different than on platforms like LiveJournal, where the social and archival sides of fandom exist in the same place. Several features of the site [foster what rocket-sith calls](https://rocket-sith.tumblr.com/post/156881115906/francisperfectionbonnefoy-vulgarweed) a “fucked up bully culture, where nobody is responsible for monitoring their own consumption, and rather they expect everyone else to custom tailor content to the whims and desires of the Shrieking Banshee Masses.” Such features as anonymous asks facilitate harassment, and purity culture thrives on Tumblr.

In late 2018, Tumblr announced that it would ban adult content. Even before the ban, Yahoo and Verizon, the site's corporate owners, had taken many steps against adult content on the site to appease advertisers and turn a profit. [[This article](https://theoutline.com/post/1786/yahoo-didn-t-kill-tumblr-but-verizon-surely-will?zi=miy4p5fh&zd=2) from 2017 lays out an accurate prediction of how Verizon's ownership marked the end for Tumblr, largely because of the ways it would handle adult content.] Restrictions on adult content impact more than just fan communities, but fan communities are highly impacted by these decisions. Fandoms are a place where many people interact with others like them for the first time and can find ways to cope with and process their traumas and experiences. Fans could never rely on Tumblr as a platform to protect their access to these interactions because “we’re not tumblr’s clients. people paying tumblr for advertising space are tumblr’s clients. the verizon stockholders are tumblr’s clients. we - the tumblr userbase - are the product for sale. [We’re the potential clientele that advertisers hope to capture](https://freedom-of-fanfic.tumblr.com/post/180802796084/do-you-think-that-after-such-vocal-complaints-from).” Unlike AO3, Verizon will never put fans first. [As Betsy Rosenblatt said](https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/4-buncha-lawyers), “When someone is making money from fan labor, there is always an opportunity for censorship.” Censorship is dangerous to fandom specifically, but also to any marginalized groups who try to use the Internet to make their lives better.

**SESTA/FOSTA**

To understand Tumblr’s December 17, 2018 adult content ban, we have to look back to April of that year and the passing of the Senate’s Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the House of Representatives’ Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA/FOSTA). While this bill nominally seems like a good thing, it has actually been disastrous for trafficked people and sex workers--which the bill falsely equates--as well as online freedom. Like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Communications Decency Act Section 230 used to provide platforms freedom from liability for what their users do on their sites. SESTA/FOSTA reversed that clause and made platforms liable for their users' actions, ostensibly to stop trafficking. It did not work, and many organizations and individuals at the time warned that it would do more harm than good. The Department of Justice itself opposed this bill, under the grounds that it would actually make it harder to stop sex trafficking. And that turned out to be true: [San Francisco’s newly released crime statistics show a 170% increase in trafficking](https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/31/sex-censorship-killed-internet-fosta-sesta/?guccounter=1). [This statistic reflects the numbers from 2018.] In response to this bill, this past year has seen an endless list of platforms altering their Terms of Service and banning content; the list includes Microsoft, Google, Craigslist, Backpage, Reddit, Patreon, PayPal, Instagram, Facebook, and, of course, Tumblr.

The outcry has been loud, but only from a few. Too many people still do not know about this bill, even though it has life-threatening consequences. [I do not have space in this paper to address the harm this has caused to sex workers, but I encourage you to find some of the plentiful articles and social media posts by sex workers on the topic if you want to know more.] A sex crisis call worker writes, “I can tell you for a fact that Tumblr helped a generation of frightened, isolated kids trying to figure out their sexual identity” because they could find content of people who were like them, and now that is gone. [As Richa Kaul Padte points out](https://www.them.us/story/sex-online-thinner-straighter-whiter), that “internet policies around sexuality are consistently implemented in favor of straight, white, cis male desires isn’t a mistake in the design; it is the design.” The Internet will of course continue to host sexual content, but it will be increasingly homogenous and not reflective of most people’s experience. [Stephan and Pup Amp, San Francisco’s Mr. Friendly 2018 and 2019, respectively](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrP0tvoUgd4), said, “When we shut down people’s way of talking or shut down ways of education, it only adds to stigma, whether that’s in regard to HIV, sex work, or sex education in general.” Despite all its flaws, Tumblr provided such an important space for people to express themselves and reduce stigma, but because it is run by a corporation that cares more about making money than people’s wellbeing, it will never choose to fight the legal battles necessary to keep adult content. AO3, as a platform that is dedicated to its users and freedom of expression, is one of the few safe havens left on the Internet for sexual minorities.

**Conclusion**

As corporations work toward the goal of shaping the Internet to reflect the power dynamics of the real world, pockets of resistance are increasingly harder to come by and even more important. Fandom culture, particularly the online fan platform AO3, provides one such site of resistance. Through fanfiction posted to AO3, people can explore and dream up new ways of existing in the world, both in terms of sexuality and as a foil to neoliberal logics. Sexuality is a huge part of human existence, and stigma and shame harm people’s mental, emotional, and physical health. Creating spaces where people can address their identities and be themselves is a radical act in itself. AO3 does not allow people to mention or include links to ways to make money off of their fics, which empowers fans to create things free from the pressure of market logics. This encourages people to write what they are interested in and want to explore, instead of limiting them to what they think people want to see from them. Finding joy in ourselves and our communities challenges the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism, and we can use our fanfiction to find hope and empowerment in our offline lives.


	6. Citations and Bibliography

**Chapter 1**

[1] Wendy Brown, _Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution_ (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 2015), 31, 38.

[2] Henry Jenkins, Mizuko Ito, and danah boyd, _Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics_ (Cambridge: Polity, 2016), 136.

[3] Brown, _Undoing the Demos_ , 36.

**Chapter 2**

[4] Henry Jenkins, _Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture_ , 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013), 277-80.

[5] Cornel Sandvoss, _Fans: The Mirror of Consumption_ (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), 8.

[6] Abigail de Kosnik, “Memory, Archive, and History in Political Fan Fiction,” in _Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World_ , ed. Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 2nd ed. (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 270.

[7] Henrik Linden, _Fans and Fan Cultures: Tourism, Consumerism and Social Media_ (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 11-2.

[8] Jenkins, _Textual Poachers_ , 284.

[9] Henry Jenkins, “Textual Poachers,” in _The Fan Fiction Studies Reader_ , ed. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014), 30.

[10] Francesca Coppa, “Writing Bodies in Space: Media Fan Fiction as Theatrical Performance,” in _The Fan Fiction Studies Reader_ , ed. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014), 77.

[11] Sandvoss, _Fans_ , 75.

[12] Jenkins, _Textual Poachers_ , 162-76.

[13] Kristina Busse, “Intimate Intertextuality and Performative Fragments in Media Fanfiction,” in _Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World_ , ed. Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 2nd ed. (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 54, 49.

[14] Sandvoss, _Fans_ , 78.

[15] Alexis Lothian, “Sex, Utopia, and the Queer Temporalities of Fannish Love,” in _Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World_ , ed. Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 2nd ed. (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 239-40.

**Chapter 3**

[16] Rebecca Tushnet, “Copyright Law, Fan Practices, and the Rights of the Author (2017),” in _Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World_ , ed. Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 2nd ed. (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 80.

[17] Linden, _Fans and Fan Cultures_ , 77.

[18] Linden, _Fans and Fan Cultures_ , 222.

[19] Linden, _Fans and Fan Cultures_ , 71. Emphasis original.

[20] Jenkins, _Participatory Culture_ , 137.

[21] Brown, _Undoing the Demos_ , 44.

[22] Linden, _Fans and Fan Cultures_ , 30.

[23] Tushnet, “Copyright Law,” 78.

**Chapter 4**

[24] Joanna Russ, “Pornography by Women for Women, with Love,” in _The Fan Fiction Studies Reader_ , ed. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014), 88.

* * *

Bibliography

  * Brown, Wendy. _Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution_. Brooklyn: Zone Books, 2015.
  * Blue, Violet. "[How sex censorship killed the internet we love](https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/31/sex-censorship-killed-internet-fosta-sesta/?guccounter=1)." _engadget_ , January 31, 2019.
  * Busch, Caitlin. "[An Archive of Our Own: How AO3 built a nonprofit fanfiction empire and safe haven](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/an-archive-of-our-own-how-ao3-built-a-nonprofit-fanfiction-empire-and-safe-haven)." _SYFY WIRE_ , February 12, 2019.
  * Busse, Kristina. “Intimate Intertextuality and Performative Fragments in Media Fanfiction.” In _Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World_ , edited by Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 2nd ed. 45-59. New York: New York University Press, 2017.
  * Cegłowski, Maciej. “[Fan is a Tool-Using Animal](https://idlewords.com/talks/fan_is_a_tool_using_animal.htm).” Lecture, dConstruct Conference, Brighton, September 6, 2013.
  * Chin, Bertha. “[Sherlockology and Galactica.tv: Fan sites as gifts or exploited labor?](https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0513)” _Transformative Works and Cultures_ 15 (2014).
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  * De Kosnik, Abigail. “Memory, Archive, and History in Political Fan Fiction.” In _Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World_ , edited by Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 2nd ed. 270-84. New York: New York University Press, 2017.
  * Fiesler, Casey, Shannon Morrison, and Amy S. Bruckman. “An Archive of Their Own: A Case Study of Feminist HCI and Values in Design.” _CHI ‘16: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_ (2016). <http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858409>.
  * Jenkins, Henry. “Textual Poachers.” In _The Fan Fiction Studies Reader_ , edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, 26-43. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014.
  * \---. _Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture_. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2013.
  * Jenkins, Henry, Mizuko Ito, and danah boyd. _Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics_. Cambridge: Polity, 2016.
  * Klink, Flourish. “[Towards a Definition of ‘Fanfiction.’](https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/towards-a-definition-of-fanfiction)” _Fansplaining_ , May 30, 2017.
  * Linden, Henrik. _Fans and Fan Cultures: Tourism, Consumerism and Social Media_. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
  * Lothian, Alexis. “Sex, Utopia, and the Queer Temporalities of Fannish Love.” In _Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World_ , edited by Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 2nd ed. 238-52. New York: New York University Press, 2017.
  * Minkel, Elizabeth. “[The Online Free Speech Debate Is Raging in Fanfiction, Too](https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/8/18072622/fanfic-ao3-free-speech-censorship-fandom).” _The Verge_ , November 8, 2018.
  * Padte, Richa Kaul. “[Sex Online Is Becoming Thinner, Straighter, and Whiter](https://www.them.us/story/sex-online-thinner-straighter-whiter).” _them._ February 14, 2019.
  * Russ, Joanna. “Pornography by Women for Women, with Love.” In _The Fan Fiction Studies Reader_ , edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, 82-96. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014.
  * Sandvoss, Cornel. _Fans: The Mirror of Consumption_. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.
  * Schwedel, Heather. “[Why Did Fans Flee LiveJournal, and Where Will They Go After Tumblr?](https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/why-did-fans-leave-livejournal-and-where-will-they-go-after-tumblr.html)” _Slate_ , March 29, 2018.
  * Tushnet, Rebecca. “Copyright Law, Fan Practices, and the Rights of the Author (2017).” In _Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World_ , edited by Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 2nd ed. 77-90. New York: New York University Press, 2017.



**Author's Note:**

> \- In case you're curious, the fic that first brought me to ao3 was emmbrancsxx0’s Merlin and Dexter crossover [Darkly Dreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/works/962817/chapters/1887370)
> 
> \- Speaking of FanLib, anyone else thinking about the recent trend of apps that steal content and make money off of it?
> 
> \- Regarding fandom migrations mentioned in chapter 2, I feel like I need to specify that AO3 is actually really important _because_ it's stable in a way corporate-owned platforms aren't. It's set up to last. Does that mean that it never ever ever risks getting taken down? Sadly, no. But the OTW isn't going to just get mad one day and rage-quit the entire site, because a) they're a group, so no one person can make that decision, and b) they understand and respect the importance of reliable, censor-free fandom spaces
> 
> \- Please check out [Maciej Cegłowski’s talk](https://idlewords.com/talks/fan_is_a_tool_using_animal.htm) for an unrelated but amazing scroll through fandom Internet capacity
> 
> \- Expanding on a point from Fiesler in chapter 2, because I'm not sure I explained it well enough: Fandoms have certain characterizations that they tend towards. For example, is there a moment in your fandom where everyone just said “I think the fuck not” about a certain character choice? Did the fandom completely ignore/retcon a character death? Is there a plot line that never happened? And the other way, is there a really popular fic that influences how people treat certain characters? Did someone write something that inspired a bunch of fanfic of that fanfic? This happens in pockets too, so even within the same fandom, there can be more than one dominant interpretation from different groups, but each are equally attached to their interpretation, and it informs their transformative works, which in turn reaffirm the interpretation
> 
> \- This paper is based on a two-pronged argument, and I worry that it seems disjointed. I struggled with deciding on an order to present my argument in. To clarify: I point to AO3 as a rare site that upholds freedom to think and explore and dream without censorship, then I touch on why that is so important (although this paper largely takes that as a given instead of something to prove, which I acknowledge as a shortcoming), before I bring up other sites to demonstrate how economic forces make any profit-making venture vulnerable to censorship for the sake of ad revenue or angry investors. In contrast, AO3 is not vulnerable to censorship because it has no advertisers and is community run and funded. Perhaps it would have made sense to reverse the order in which I presented things, but I didn't write it that way, so *shrug*
> 
> \- The bibliography does not include social media posts or podcasts, but all of those sources are linked as I mention them in the text. 
> 
> \- My Tumblr is [farkenshnoffingottom](https://farkenshnoffingottom.tumblr.com/). Come say hi! :)


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